Commencement is almost upon us! Special Collections & Archives is thrilled to spotlight Student Assistant Zaidi Babcock, who will be graduating from Northern Arizona University next week.
Portrait of Zaidi Babcock
Zaidi will receive her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. She minored in Italian, though the COVID-19 pandemic foiled her plans to study abroad in Italy. Zaidi has served as an SCA Student Assistant since fall 2021, helping staff with projects including re-processing the Northern Arizona University photographs and inventorying and re-housing materials in the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona records and the Angel Delgadillo papers.
SCA staff caught up with Zaidi before commencement to ask about her career in Cline Library and her plans for life after NAU!
SCA: What is your best memory from your time working in Cline Library?
ZB: My best memory working in Cline Library certainly has to be finding a faculty photo of my Great-Great-Grandpa Cliff Harkins in the unprocessed NAU Archives photos collection!
SCA: What surprised you most about working in a library or archives setting?
ZB: I was honestly surprised at how much fun I have had here! Looking over old documents for nearly two years has been significantly more fun than one would expect.
SCA: What is a fun historical fact you learned from your work projects in Special Collections & Archives?
ZB: In the last few months I have been working with our Route 66 Collection / the Angel Delgadillo Collection. It was super interesting to learn that Angel Delgadillo worked so tenaciously to create the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona!
SCA: What skills did you learn here that you can take to another job?
ZB: I became really comfortable with communication and inputting information, which I think will travel well to another job!
Zaidi inventorying partially processed photographs in the Northern Arizona University Photographs in fall 2021. Photograph by Cindy Summers.
SCA: What are your [tentative] plans after graduation?
ZB: I fell in love with Flagstaff, as I am sure many do, so I plan to stay in Flagstaff and either work for a Cultural Resource Management company or do lab work!
Special Collections & Archives thanks Zaidi Babcock for her excellent work as an SCA Student Assistant over the past two years and congratulates her on her upcoming commencement as a member of the class of 2023! We wish Zaidi continued success in her post-college life in Flagstaff, and encourage her to come back and visit!
April 27, 2023
by special collections & archives Comments Off on New Exhibit Showcases Early Days of Rafting the Grand Canyon
Johnny Walker in Lava Falls, 1978. Photo Michael Collier
Cline Library has unveiled a new exhibit, “THE GRAND CANYON; A Boatman’s Perspective.” The exhibit, curated by photographer Michael Collier, features 47 photographs that portray and reflect upon the experiences of river running of the 1970s and 1980s.
The images were drawn from Michael Collier’s photographic collections. We meet Collier and his river running comrades, paddle alongside them, and begin to feel how the experience was different then – new, raw, and full of unproven successes and failures. The show’s QR codes connect viewers to Collier’s narrative, telling the stories behind the images. The narration provides insight into an experience that once defined what it meant to be a ‘Boatman’.
Helen Fairley in Buck Farm Canyon, 1985. Photo Michael Collier
What was Grand Canyon river running like in earlier days? According to Collier:
Sediment was plentiful, and the beaches were bigger. Wild floods held vegetation in check until Glen Canyon Dam was completed in the early 1960s. Trips were cheaper, and wages were lower. Passengers came from a broad cross-section of society. There were few Park Service regulations. The people of Grand Canyon – and the Canyon itself – were different in those days.
Collier first paddled through the upper Grand Canyon in 1970. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he rowed commercially for the precursor of Arizona Raft Adventures, which provided support for the exhibit. He received degrees in geology while studying a fold in the Muav limestone that could only be reached by raft. He rowed and motored on science, administrative and private trips within the Canyon. Always, he photographed.
Gary Mercado below Thunder River, 1975. Photo Michael Collier
The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, is located on the east side of the Jean Collins Reading Room on the first floor of Cline Library and is available whenever the library is open. Cline Library is located at the intersection of Knoles Drive and McCreary Road on the campus of Northern Arizona University (NAU). For information on public parking options, visit nau.edu/parking.
The exhibit is part of the library’s commitment to providing educational and cultural opportunities for NAU students and the surrounding community. For more information on Cline Library, visit nau.edu/library.
The exhibit will be installed on the first floor of the library in the public exhibit space through December 15, 2023. For more information, contact Kevin Ketchner via email kevin.ketchner@nau.edu.
November 10, 2022
by special collections & archives Comments Off on New Special Collections and Archives Exhibit Showcases the Lost World of Glen Canyon
PHOTO: TAD NICHOLS/NAUH.99.3.1.37.124 In 1965 photographer Tad Nichols captured this image of Cathedral in the Desert, a monument in Glen Canyon, Ariz., that is re-emerging.
Cline Library Special Collections and Archives unveiled a new exhibit, Images of a Lost World: Glen Canyon on the Colorado, on Oct. 28. The exhibit, which was curated by librarian Hank Hassell, features 56 photographs of Glen Canyon and its tributaries before the magnificent canyon complex was flooded by the waters impounded by Glen Canyon Dam.
PHOTO: LAURA ROSE TAYLOR The “Images of the Lost World” exhibit was curated by Hank Hassell, a librarian at Cline Library and the author of Rainbow Bridge: An Illustrated History (1999).
Images of a Lost World features the scenic wonders of a pristine, pre-dam Glen Canyon from several perspectives, including a modern history of the canyon, its prehistoric Native American inhabitants, and the archaeological resources once found in Glen Canyon.
The beginning of the exhibit features 1953 United States Geological Survey 15-minute topographic maps that showed the full extent of Glen Canyon from Hite, Utah, to Lees Ferry, Ariz., before the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam.
PHOTO: LAURA ROSE TAYLOR NAU students viewed a 1962 Dick Sprang photograph of Meskin Bar (Utah) at the October 2022 exhibit opening.
The locations of the photographs in the exhibit are marked on these maps in order to provide geographical context. The images are arranged by river mile, allowing the visitor to make their way down the river both literally and figuratively, and interpretive text at selected points in the display provides additional historical and cultural context.
In addition, display cases feature the “discovery” of Forgotten Canyon, the recreational pioneers of the upper Colorado River, the controversy surrounding the protection and eventual flooding of Rainbow Bridge National Monument, plus a selection of recommended books on Glen Canyon and its history for those interested in pursuing the subject in greater depth.
The images in the exhibit were all drawn from photographic collections housed at Special Collections and Archives. Photographers represented include folk singer and activist Katie Lee (1919-2017), noted landscape photographer Josef Muench (1904-1998), and Emery Kolb (1881-1976), who with his brother Ellsworth took some of the first motion pictures along the Colorado in 1911. Images from the collections of river runners Tad Nichols, Margaret Eiseman, P.T. Reilly, Kenneth Brownlee, James “Stretch” Fretwell and others are also on display.
PHOTO: CYNTHIA SUMMERS The main exhibit in the atrium of Special Collections and Archives travels along the Colorado River via photographs arranged by river mile.
The main exhibit, located in the atrium of Special Collections and Archives on the second floor of Cline Library, is open to the public during Special Collections and Archives’ open hours.
Two smaller satellite exhibits feature additional images. A display in the Scholars’ Corner coffee shop on the first floor of the library is available to view when the coffee shop is open. The second is in Cline Library’s public exhibit space, which is on the east side of the Jean Collins Reading Room on the first floor of the library; it is available to view whenever the library is open.
PHOTO: CYNTHIA SUMMERS The main exhibit in Special Collections and Archives provides an opportunity to view the “Images of a Lost World” exhibit and the space to contemplate it.
About NAU Cline Library Special Collections and Archives Cline Library Special Collections and Archives connects and engages the world with the history and culture of the Colorado Plateau and Northern Arizona University. It also provides access to archival resources from regional cultural heritage partners such as the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Arizona Historical Society and Grand Canyon Historical Society. nau.edu/special-collections
November 10, 2022
by special collections & archives Comments Off on SCA’s Fred Harvey exhibit hits the road.
NAU.PH.95.44.59.2 Billboard Advertising Seligman Fred Harvey Hotel and Coffee Shop
Special Collections and Archives is proud to lend our 2015 Fred Harvey exhibit to the Winslow Arts Trust (WAT) who will be combining it with items being loaned by the Harvey Girls of Winslow.
From the Winslow Arts Trust webpage
The original exhibit was co-curated by SCA archivist, Sean Evans and the Elizabeth and P.T. Reilly Intern, Ofelia Zepeda, titled Fred Harvey: Branding the Southwest which included an online exhibit that can be viewed on SCA’s previous exhibits web page.
NAU.PH.95.44.133.1 Fred Harvey
Although an official opening date has not been announced by WAT, the images are hung and can now be viewed during their open hours. For more information you can view their webpage: Winslow Arts Trust .
Display at Winslow Arts Trust. Photo courtesy Sean Evans
Display at Winslow Arts Trust. Photo courtesy Sean Evans
Photo courtesy Sean Evans
May 9, 2022
by special collections & archives Comments Off on An interview with Mike DeHoff of the Returning Rapids Project
In the spring of 2020, SCA received a call from Mike Dehoff who modestly called himself a member of a “group of non-academic people following a curiosity.” As a river runner and Moab business owner, Mike was in the process of forming a group that aspired to partner with non-profits to investigate rapids that were re- emerging in the Colorado River due to the mega drought. Mike had discovered some Kolb film reels in our digital collections that might be useful for comparing with rapids that were beginning to re-emerge. Since that first contact in 2020, Mike’s endeavor has grown from a passion project into the formal Returning Rapids Project. He was generous enough to take the time to answer some questions we had about this incredible work and how it all came together.
How did the Returning Rapids Project get started?
In the early part of the 2000s there was a very, very dry year – even by today’s standards. The winter of 2001/2002 produced a snowpack that was roughly 30-35% of normal. For many people who were running the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon, it was hard not to notice the drastic change as the reservoir known as lake Powell receded. Over the next 4 years it dropped 150 feet.
Cataract Canyon river maps published during the 1990s had zones marked as “Areas Inundated by Lake Powell.” When the reservoir started to drop, it was easy to get curious and wonder what was there before the reservoir flooded the lower half of Cataract Canyon.
Over the latter part of the 2000s and into the early 2010s, rapids started re-appearing along the river in areas that used to be still water, in the reservoir zone. These rapids were being carved out of the giant layer of mud, of river sediment that the reservoir caused to be dropped out in Cataract Canyon – burying the rapids and river corridor.
During this time, there was a lot of conversation among my friends about what was happening in lower Cataract Canyon, including my good friend Steve “T-Berry” Young, who was the head river ranger for Canyonlands at the time. We would wonder why there wasn’t a specific effort to study the changes in this area. Especially since the river corridor was slowly revealing more and more as the mud was carved away.
In the mid-2010s, I went to a river running event at the John Wesley Powell Museum in Green River, Utah. There was a geologist giving a talk about Colorado Plateau geology. At the end of his talk, he invited questions. I raised my hand and asked something like, “We are seeing rapids get carved out of the mud in lower Cataract Canyon that haven’t been seen since they were flooded. Do you know how many rapids there were and how many we can expect to see again?”
The geologist said one or two sentences about the lower part of the Grand Canyon and how it is dealing with the inundation of Lake Mead, then went back to discussing the various layers in Grand Canyon. I remember thinking “Huh, you didn’t even try to answer my question.”
About this time, my girlfriend Meg Flynn, got a job at the local Grand County Public Library here in Moab, Utah. On a trip through Cataract, she and I talked a lot about what materials might be available to help discover how many rapids were in Cataract Canyon. That trip was in 2013. We were camped at Clearwater Canyon (photo attached) – a very special place that has been drastically impacted by lake Powell. (and as an editorial note – its not a real Lake so it doesn’t get a capital L.)
After that trip, Meg helped me find an old guidebook – the 1971 Powell Society Guide “River Runners Guide to The Canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers.” It was published while the reservoir was filling and had a great amount of detail regarding how many rapids were in Cataract Canyon and where they were located.
It wasn’t long after that, I created a spreadsheet to track where the rapids were – and more importantly what elevations I thought they were at. The level of lake Powell is measured in elevation. The more the elevation dropped, the more it exposed the sediment beds, which allowed the river to carve away mud and expose old rapids.
This spreadsheet grew to the point that I started sharing it with the folks at the Canyonlands National Park Reservation office.They were the ones issuing permits for Cataract Canyon and were trying to advise visitors what to expect regarding the changing reservoir levels.
Then 3 key things happened, Meg and I got married and she started a program to get her Master’s degree in Library Science. I switched my side hustle as a river equipment Welder/Fabricator to a full-time job and opened up the Eddyline Welding shop in Moab. And I met Peter Lefebrve.
Peter has been a long-time river guide, running rivers all around the Colorado Plateau. He would come by my shop and we would chat about river running. We soon discovered that we shared an interest in watching the changes in lower Cataract Canyon. He regularly took pictures at the mouths of the side canyons to try to document the changes he was observing.
Camping near Clearwater Canyon in 2013
As Meg worked her way through her Master’s program, she gained a much better understanding of how to navigate archives and special collections to pursue research questions. It was through her growing knowledge that I learned about really great collections of photos, maps, and other written materials that were housed in various places – like the Cline Library’s Special Collections.
Peter would come by the shop between his river trips and we would compare notes about the changes we were seeing in Cataract. At home, during times when Meg was diligently completing her MLS program work, I would search through the various archives that housed photos of Cataract Canyon.
During this time there were a few other key people who also helped spring the project forward. Bego Gerhart helped with early efforts. John Weisheit with Living Rivers shared a private collection of George Simmons maps and photos, and Robert Tubbs shared his Cataract scroll map made by Les Jones in 1963. The map was a great resource for finding where rapids were and their historic elevations.
This takes us up to 2017-2018. In these years we were compiling a lot of historic photos. They were housed in a binder which we began loaning to people to take on river trips.
Sheet M George Simmons Notes map cropped for Gypsum Canyon area detail
Peter had been watching some rocks that were just upstream of a large side canyon called Gypsum Canyon. Gypsum Canyon had a rapid at its mouth that was reputed to be a fierce one prior to the reservoir. We became keenly interested in Gypsum Canyon Rapid as we thought it might be close to returning.
It was during this time that a key photo from the Cline Library Kolb Brothers collection came into play. The rocks that Peter had been watching just upstream of Gypsum Canyon matched up perfectly with a randomly taken photo that we had. This was a very big “A-HA” moment. The rocks were still all in the same place, the rapid was returning and had a very similar layout.
2019 Match of EC La Rue photo – Peter Lefebvre
During the summer of 2018, I had an odd project in the Eddyline Welding shop that involved outfitting a roto molded plastic drift boat into something liked a decked over dory. The boat was to be used on a Green River source to sea trip by a staff member from the American Rivers organization. This person, Mike Fiebig, was taking a sabbatical from his position working to protect rivers in Montana. Mike and his wife Jenny were going to use the dory on most of their trip. They asked if Meg and I wanted to join them on the Cataract Canyon stretch of their expedition.
On Mike and Jenny Fiebig’s trip through Cataract, we met a lot of folks. One of them was Seth Arens who works for Western Water Assessment and is housed by the Center for Global Change and Sustainability at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. After showing everyone our material on the Fiebig trip, Seth Arens proposed that we convene a broad coalition of university staff and potentially students to look at the changes we were trying to document.
In 2019, the project really started to take off. We published our first “Field Binder” which was an 80-page pamphlet that helped people running through Cataract Canyon understand what was and is happening. That fall the first science trip was put together by Seth Arens and the Center for Global Change and Sustainability. It was a collaborative trip with many University of Utah Faculty and Utah Water Science Center USGS staffers.
Mike and Jenny Fiebig and their roto modeled dory in Big Drop 3 – Bego Gerhart
On the first fall science trip, we had another A-Ha moment. Not so much for Peter and I, but we were able to watch all these highly educated experts in their fields wrap their minds around what we were seeing. It was also on this trip that we met another key player in the Returning Rapids partnership – Scott Hynek from the Utah Water Science Center.
The connection with Scott was important in a few ways. First, Scott brought an unassuming attitude with him. It is important to understand that up to this point Peter and myself had endured a lot of “Who are you guys with again?” “You’re are trying to do what?” and “What agency are you with?” … None of that came from Scott (and may other parties on the first science trip). But Scott and his research team had also been working on many lake Powell related tasks – the main one being the growing sediment delta. They were charged with answering the question: “If the reservoir is 30-ish % full, how much of that is sediment?”
It was on the 2019 trip that another key thing changed while talking with one of the USGS scientists. Prior to the trip, people just called the banks of sediment along the river the “lake Powell Formation” or just “the mud.” David O’Leary of the USGS raised a protest to the terminology by saying – “John Wesley Powell’s name has been insulted enough by this reservoir being named after him – this mud shouldn’t be named after him also.” And in that moment, someone on the trip said, “Then maybe it should be called the ‘Dominy’ Formation” (Floyd Dominy was the head of the Bureau of Reclamation and championed the building of Glen Canyon Dam) and that name stuck.
It was that winter that I arranged a meeting with Eric Balken who is the Executive Director of the Glen Canyon Institute (GCI). Meg and I met with Eric and broached the idea of working together – and to be umbrellaed under their 501 c3 non-profit status. Up to that point we had been doing everything out of our own pockets –volunteering our time and spending our own money. Eric and the rest of GCI agreed and we were now able to receive donations to cover our expenses. The Returning Rapids Project is now a project under the Glen Canyon Institute.
Since that first science trip a lot has happened. I will get into that in the following q&a. There is also more material on our website returingrapids.com
Scott Hynek and Chris Wilkoske of the USGS in the front, Peter Lefebvre on the skyline, Susan Bush on the left, Bego behind the tripod, and Mike DeHoff on the right October 2019
What has been the most significant accomplishment of the project thus far?
Three things:
1. Drawing attention to the changes we are seeing in Cataract Canyon. We have had river guides tell us that when they have our field binders with them so their passengers can read them it has “changed their trip.” The way we are communicating what we are seeing is helping people understand and care about a place that many people gave up on once it was drowned under lake Powell.
2. Getting a broad range of scientists to work together on our science trips and overall efforts. It is so great to sit around camp and listen to all the different perspectives, ideas, and discoveries that people share.
3. The “Dominy Formation” name. It has stuck and is well deserved.
What one or two aspects of the project would you like everyone to know about?
Recently, a person who is director level position for a national river advocacy agency said to me, “I finally get it! For so many things “Colorado River” the Grand Canyon sucks all the air out of the room.” That keeps resonating with me. The Grand Canyon is an important and beautiful place but so is Cataract, Glen, and many other places along our beloved river.
If we only focus our attention and stewardship on one place, then it is easy to lever other places out of favor… and make it easier to justify things like a big Dam project.
The consequences from this line of thinking continue to have an impact. A simple example: I spoke with someone who was a National Park Service photographer in the 1990s and 2000s and asked if they had any pictures of the areas where we are now seeing so much change. Their answer, “You know, while I don’t want to admit it, after watching the river turn into the reservoir, I just set my camera down. I didn’t take pictures because it wasn’t a river anymore.”
What I would like everyone to know, and it seems so true in the face of climate change now, is that we all have to pay attention and leave room for/ not give up hope that the world’s natural forces can make big advances towards restoring themselves from the impacts of our cultural manifest destiny. We just have to give it a chance. And where we can, we should make it a conscious effort.
The other thing I would like everyone to know, is it sure seems to me that what we have going on regarding our water storage and delivery system isn’t working. If you go back and read the book “Encounters with the Archdruid” on the pages where Floyd Dominy is debating David Brower from the Sierra Club, Dominy admits that in the future we will find better ways to deal with water in the southwest. That was 60 years ago… and it sure seems to me like we need to do some re-thinking.
What role have libraries and archives played in the development of the Returning Rapids Project and the final products of the project?
Libraries and librarians tend to be the unsung heroes of information organization and underpinning of so many research projects. What would Google be if it wasn’t modeled after an incredibly effective librarian?
I suppose with those two initial statements, I have showed my hand. There is no way we would have the level of understanding of the arc of change in Cataract Canyon without photos that someone took care to identify and archive thanks to valuing the preservation of information so it someone can reference it in the near or distant future.
Having access to the information – photos, maps, narratives contained in archives has served as a trail of breadcrumbs and treasure maps to help unwind our curiosities.
That we have an incredibly skilled librarian as a core member of our team has been an invaluable asset when navigating search results, investigating new threads, and tracking all the metadata. It has been foundational to us finding our way and being able to retrace our steps through the vast amount of information housed online.
Also, as our photo archive grows, Meg has been essential for helping to organize our information.
Photos on a beach during pandemic times – Paul Richer, Oct 2020 Science Trip
How did you discover the resources at Cline Library Special Collections and Archives that are supporting your project?
The Cline Library Special Collections contains one of the biggest archives of info about the Colorado River and its history.
Initially, search results just pop up and take you into the Cline’s digitized materials. But the layout of the site allows you to search all the different angles that may yield more info.
We specifically found the Kolb brothers collection very helpful. Their 1911 trip and then the 1921 USGS survey trip that they were a part of did a great job of documenting the areas they traveled through.
We are working on a big re-edit of the Kolb Brothers Film Reels. The reels that they showed in their South Rim of the Grand Canyon studio tend to have a lot of footage from the 1921 USGS survey trip through Cataract Canyon. Using all the other photos in our project archive, we were able to further identify reel shots by location. Currently, we are working on re-editing the reels in an upstream to downstream fashion. It will let us see a run through Cataract Canyon as the Kolbs were able to capture it. This includes footage of many rapids that were buried under the waters of lake Powell.
Additionally, in September 2021, we were able to do a 100 years later photo recreation trip with many of the photos from the 1921 USGS trip. Peter and Cindy at Special Collections were very helpful in getting us materials to make this happen. You can see the trip report from this trip: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sXKEAC8m_Y1lvnm9cUp34HoVufhYFRDe/view
Photo match 1921-2021 near Palmer Canyon
What do you see as the future for the Returning Rapids project?
We like to summarize our project with, “we go boating, take pictures, and tell the story of the changes we are seeing.”
The project is growing through the numbers of people who want to see the results of our research and the story of changes along the river.
Some of the scientists we collaborate with are delving into much deeper levels of research. There have been several attempts to be funded by the National Science Foundation. In an ideal world, maybe an effort similar to the Grand Canyon Research and Monitoring Center could be formed.
If we can tell a large number of people the story of the changes we are seeing in a simple manner, maybe it can affect our relation with the Colorado River.
Looking down on Rapid # 28, a returned rapid, Mike Fiebig
What future do you see for the greater Glen Canyon area in the 10-20 years?
I think there is a simple fact we need to face. There isn’t enough water in the Colorado River system to keep 2 large reservoirs full. Also, this method of water storage isn’t the most effective means to store and deliver water to users. And it isn’t a healthy way to maintain some semblance of the ecosystem that the Colorado once was.
When people who understand water law start explaining to me all the different aspects regarding who gets what and why, I come back to a simple thought, “This is one of the most convoluted expressions of greed that there is in modern society.”
So, when you put those 2 things together – not enough water and a convoluted expression of greed, it leaves me feeling very uncertain about a clear future for Glen Canyon. When I am sitting next to the river in a place that is so quickly showing signs of recovery, I can’t help but think that the natural world will force its hand before our governmental dysfunctions can find a good solution.
I think the most practical solution is to put whatever water there is in lake Powell into lake Mead – that would be the lower basin’s storage pool. For the upper basin states, it just doesn’t make sense to have a reservoir right on the tail end of the “upper” basin – its dumb. Why not keep all the high elevation reservoirs as full as possible and just get rid of Powell entirely?
lake Powell water levels over 2017 – present http://graphs.water-data.com/lakepowell/
What has been your most unexpected discovery thus far?
There have been unexpected discoveries each year.
We found ancient structures half buried in mud and petroglyph panels that were once under reservoir waters.
Last fall we discovered bedrock strata emerging out of the mud near the North Wash take out – which means that we could see rapid or waterfall similar to the ones at Piute Farms in the San Juan and Pearce Ferry just downstream from the Grand Wash Cliffs.
But the 2 biggest discoveries that I am so surprised about are:
During the planning stage of the Dam and potential reservoir, I am amazed at how little was known about the areas the project was going to effect. When I read through old reports, some are outright apologetic about how they couldn’t survey everything. Additionally, all the survey information was never compiled into one singular document to fully inform the decision and address the true cost of the project.
Right now, the biggest discovery for me is not an easy one. Anyone who knows the Colorado in its true form knows how much mud the river moves. All that mud settles out of the river and into the reservoir. It is what has buried the rapids in Cataract Canyon. As the reservoir level declines, the muddy sediment delta continues to grow and is now moving.
I think of it like this – in the 1960s/1970s Glen and Cataract Canyons were flooded by water. Now we are watching a giant mud glacier that formed in Cataract slowly creep and grow as it moves into Glen Canyon. I have had a chance to meet several state and federal government officials and ask them “Who is in charge of the mud?” So far, I have not received an answer that gives me any faith that what is now 2.25 cubic kilometers of mud (and growing) will be purposely managed by any government agency.
If so many states in the southwest United States claim a percentage of the Colorado River’s water, they should also take responsibility for their percentage of the byproduct, the mud. There are currently no efforts to do so – it’s just a by-product that is piling up in a place with National Park level characteristics.
Meg Flynn, Librarian Extraordinaire! and the sediment delta near White Canyon, 2021
May 3, 2022
by special collections & archives Comments Off on Special Collections and Archives – Closing Early on Wednesday, May 4 at 3:00pm for the Golden Graduates Reception
The 1965 Golden Graduates on the Steps of Old Main, May 9, 2015. Photo courtesy of David Slipher, Alumni Relations.
Special Collections and Archives will be closing early on Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 3:00pm to host the Golden Graduates reception. The Golden Graduates are the President’s guests of honor for the spring commencement exercises. The Golden Graduates graduated from NAU 50 years ago. This will be the first in-person Golden Graduate reception since the pandemic. Therefore, the President has invited graduates from the classes of 1970, 1971, and 1972. This is an invitation only event.
Special Collections and Archives will resume its regular hours on Thursday, May 5, 2022.
March 24, 2022
by special collections & archives Comments Off on Update from the Archives
This month we celebrate two SCA team members for being honored with 2021 Service Awards from the Arizona Library Association.
Rich Boyd. AZLA 2021 Volunteer of the Year Award recipient.
In a future update we will learn about the projects Rich has been a part of over his many years of volunteering in Special Collections and Archives. This time, however, we asked Sam Meier, Archivist for Discovery in SCA to tell us about an exciting collaboration she has been a part of this semester with Dr. Keleman Saxena. Below is her response.
Sam Meier, Archivist for Discovery. AZLA 2021 Emerging Leader Award recipient.
Those who seldom journey to the archives tend to assume that Cline Library’s Special Collections and Archives (SCA) is full of dusty boxes of old documents and the old-school historians and genealogists who pore over them. In truth, researchers consult SCA’s archival collections for all kinds of projects, from searching for original footage to use in their documentary film to determining what kind of window to utilize as a replacement for a historically significant property.
Over the years, SCA has supported several scientific projects, including a 2014 partnership with the Southwest Experimental Garden Array (SEGA) using historic photographs and repeat photography to examine changes to plant life over time. This spring, I am delighted to support one of NAU’s first McAllister Climate Education, Engagement, and Design (CEED) Fellows, Dr. Alder Keleman Saxena, in a course which enables students to explore the environmental effects of human-built infrastructure on the Colorado Plateau using digitized archival materials available online via the Colorado Plateau Digital Collections.
Dr. Keleman Saxena and I began brainstorming the class that would become ANT 499: Climate Change and Infrastructure on the Colorado Plateau in fall 2019. We first met at the NAU New Faculty Orientation. She was new to Flagstaff, and she had recently completed her work on the digital humanities project Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene with colleagues at Stanford University. As a born-and-raised Flagstaffian, the only thing I love more than sharing my hometown with new friends is talking about the amazing archival resources that we hold in Special Collections and Archives, which document the history of the place I have always considered home. Over mugs of coffee at Macy’s, we discussed the possibility of collaborating on a future class which addressed our mutual interest in humanistic explorations of climate change.
A whole pandemic year later, Dr. Keleman Saxena reached out to me again to see if I was still interested in her proposed course. I was. Together, we crafted a proposal for the McAllister Fellowship which proved to be successful. Dr. Keleman Saxena was awarded one of NAU’s first two McAllister CEED Fellowships in May 2021.
This spring, we have collaborated closely on designing the course and its final assignment, which will be digital projects built in Omeka examining different types of human-built infrastructure on the Plateau, such as roads and dams, and their relationships(s) to climate change. Through lectures and weekly assignments, students in the course have begun to acquire basic archival literacy skills such as how to search for and identify relevant primary source materials using Arizona Archives Online and the Colorado Plateau Digital Collections. I have supported the students in learning how to properly handle and consult archival materials on site in the Miriam Lemont Reading Room.
As the semester continues, the students will gain experience interpreting these physical and digitized historical materials within the framework of a ‘feral entity’: an event, process, or entity which emerges from “human-sponsored projects but are not in human control.” This work strengthens students’ research skills and hones their ability to critically analyze historic and contemporary aspects of the landscapes they encounter each day living, studying, and working in Flagstaff.
So far, topics identified by the students as possible themes for their final digital projects include:
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam, the creation of Lake Powell, and their impacts on the Colorado River;
The construction and maintenance of roads, particularly forest roads and roads built on tribal lands;
The development of and subsequent legal battles over Snow Bowl ski resort;
January 7th has been designated “Old Rock Day.” A day to celebrate geology, fossils and geologists around the world. We would like to honor two of our favorite ‘rock stars,” Peter Huntoon and George Billingsley who both have collections housed in Cline Library’s Special Collections and Archives. As graduate students in 1970, these two giants of geology came together with six other geologists to complete an assignment funded by the Museum of Northern Arizona, the Grand Canyon Natural History Association and the Grand Canyon National Park to create the first complete geological map of the eastern portion of the Grand Canyon, known today as the “Blue Dragon.” This enormous undertaking took 4.5 years of fieldwork and 1.5 years of production time which led to the highest selling edition of any map in history with all proceeds from it and the 3 subsequent editions going to the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Grand Canyon Natural History Association.
The Blue Dragon Map
To learn more about the story of how the numerous geologists and organizations came together to complete this enormous project, take a look at the lecture, The Making of the Blue Dragon given by Peter Huntoon and George Billingsley as part of the Grand Canyon National Park, Centennial Perspectives lecture series in June of 2019.
The 2019 lecture announcement
After completing the map of eastern portion of the Grand Canyon, there was still more work to do for these two ambitious scientists. Next, they completed mapping of the west half of the Grand Canyon and were later contracted to produce geological maps of Canyonlands and Capital Reef National Parks in Utah.
The Finns in Canyonlands National Park NAU.PH.2003.11.68.M5528
George later made it his mission to map the surrounding areas outside of the Grand Canyon. Digital versions of trip logs, fieldnotes, photographs and oral histories about his work and life can be found here in SCA’s digital collections or you can view the finding guide for The George Billingsley papersto see the collection holdings (digitized and non-digitized material). Throughout his career with the United States Geologic Survey, George published 77 maps, multiple articles, a book, and helped train the crew of the Apollo 16 space crew.
Two USGS geologists in space suits conduct a simulated lunar surface mission at the Cinder Lake crater field east of Flagstaff NAU.PH.426.467
Peter Huntoon’s collection includes documents from his professional activities and research involved in mapping numerous areas of the Colorado Plateau, such as geological research files, a research library, aerial and non-aerial photographs, and draft and published maps.
As we celebrate “Old Rock” day, we celebrate the accomplishments and the contributions of two of our favorite “old rock” researchers.
December 30, 2021
by special collections & archives Comments Off on The Protocols for Native American Archival Materials
Did you know that the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials were drafted right here at Cline Library?
This Native American Heritage Month we would like to highlight some of the important work that we have been doing to implement the Protocols, as well as the work we have been doing to share our experience and lessons learned with others in the profession.
In April 2006, Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, Arizona hosted a gathering of Native American and non-Native American cultural heritage professionals who together drafted the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, a professional best practices document which outlined guidelines for culturally responsive care of Native American archival materials held by non-tribal institutions. NAU’s Cline Library and Special Collections and Archives formally endorsed the Protocols in 2006. Since then, the staff members of Cline Library Special Collections and Archives (SCA) have sought to integrate the guidance put forth by the Protocols into all aspects of their work, including collection development, collections management, and archival arrangement and description.
In 2019, SCA’s newly hired Archivist for Discovery, Sam(antha) Meier, began revising the department’s draft Arrangement and Description Policy to address issues common to academic archives and special collections, such as an extensive and growing backlog of unprocessed materials and outdated and inaccurate legacy description. Supported by colleagues at Arizona State University, she began to explore the possibility of using ArchivesSpace to more rapidly gain collection-level control over new acquisitions, update existing legacy finding aids, and transition the department’s EAD finding aids hosted in Arizona Archives Online from EAD 2002 to EAD3. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Meier collaborated with Library Assistant Manager Cindy Summers to begin a holistic review of SCA’s legacy finding aids to prepare for their eventual ingest into ArchivesSpace for revision and correction. Meier and Summers found ways to continue this critical work remotely, as neither were initially working in Cline Library.
Cognizant of the need to implement the Protocols at every step in archival processing, including re-description, re-arrangement, and re-processing, in the winter of 2020 Meier and Summers developed a fully remote paid graduate internship, the Archival Description Internship, intended to support an MLIS student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. The internship was designed to function as a “pilot project” for the department, allowing Meier and Summers to explore how to apply the Protocols to their legacy finding aids along with intern Liz Garcia.
In April, 2021 Sam, Cindy and Liz presented an ArchivesSpace webinar reflecting on their experiences early in this multi-year project. Below are links to the webinar and to the slides that were presented.
This September the project was featured in a blogpost series presented by the Description Section of the Society of American Archivists. Below is a link to it:
Back in April, 2021 the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced 225 award recipients who will be receiving $24 million in funding this grant cycle. NAU’s Cline Library Special Collections and Archives was honored to be one of those recipients. We will receive $350,000 over a three-year period to digitize 400 rare and aging films; ours and others belonging to our cultural heritage partners, the Hopi Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, and Diné College on the Navajo Nation. These films will give us a glimpse of life in the American southwest of the Colorado Plateau in from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Our work began by ordering the technology that will be used to create the digital conversions and posting positions for a student intern and a project archivist. The project archivist hiring committee is diligently reviewing applications and preparing to interview candidates, the student intern, Olivia “Liv” Hall has been hired and is beginning to learn about the NAU films that will be converted and the people who created them. For this installment of our periodic NEH grant films project update, we’d like to introduce you to Liv.
Liv looking at films in the vault
Liv is a freshman at NAU who aspires to teach secondary history education. She’s known from a young age that she would one day be a teacher, but the level changed each year as her own grade level changed. It wasn’t until she began taking history classes and was taught by some incredible history teachers that she fell in love with history and her plans began to fall into place. Seeing her promise, archivist, Sean Evans has already forewarned her that he will spend the next three years trying to recruit her to the archival profession.
Liv chose to attend NAU for several reasons, some of them practical, some of them financial and some were just a reaction to the beauty of the region. She knew she would be attending one of the three state institutions, and with NAU’s education program, along with the Lumberjack scholarship, it took just one November visit for her to decide that NAU “was the best in-state environment,” for her.
The grant project student intern posting caught her eye because Liv thought she could learn a lot that she could bring with her to the classroom. She also liked the idea of returning history to the tribes by preserving their old and fragile films, as well as making them available for educational purposes.
When asked what one thing might surprise people about her, Liv pulled out her backpack to reveal an adorable embroidered image from The Little Prince.
The Little Prince embroidery
She’s also embroidered Frog and Toad which was included on the Frog and Toad Instagram account and she was even asked to make another for one of the followers.
Frog and Toad embroidery
Unfortunately, Liv couldn’t break SCA’s “team cat” or “team dog” tie because although she’s had dogs in the past, she really wants a cat (a “nice cat”). It’s likely that Sean will be trying to recruit her on this matter as well.
Stay tuned for future updates about this grant project and one called Shades of Route 66, generously funded by an Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona grant. We’ll introduce new student interns and a project archivist. Also coming up in SCA are meetings of the Havasupai Tribal Council (Sept.) and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Council (Oct.).